Outdoors

January 03, 2010

You enjoy lifting heavy things, so you probably spend a lot of time wishing you could shovel snow. I know you're interested in water, too, and all of the various engineering strategies for its containment and movement. So you probably daydream about snow, and think about methods for moving it and storing it.

Moving to our new place has changed our shoveling challenges a little bit. We no longer have a garage, nor a big yard, and our house is tightly wedged in a small lot, on a steep slope. This means there are few places to put the snow -- you really have to pick it up and walk it to the backyard, because if you just scoop and toss it'll go into the neighbor's walkway, or it will quickly create a wall of snow so high that your next shovelfull will just slide back down the face. It means snowmelt from our neighbor's roof turns to a treacherous flow of ice along the steepest part of our driveway, just where you need the little extra bit of traction to get the car up and over on to safety. There's a fire hydrant immediately flanking our driveway entrance, and you can't pile up your snow on top of that, plus the firemen come around after every big storm and dig out the hydrants, dumping their snow willy nilly into our driveway after we've cleared it.

The good news is that the city comes by with a little minitruck and plows and sands our sidewalk. Eventually. Also the direction of the plow usually means that we don't get the brunt of the neighborhood's snow at the end of our driveway, which was the case at our old house.

While shoveling today, I was thinking about some of the questions you might have about the whole process. I'm happy to share what I've learned. First, you want a bent-handle shovel. It's easier on your back over time. I don't think there's much of an advantage to the metal-tipped blade, though. Theoretically it helps you scrape the ice off the pavement, but if you have a bumpy brick surface to shovel, chances are the metal blade will either get damaged or just won't work at all. It's not a bad idea to have a special shovel just for scraping ice -- that one, of course, will have a narrow metal blade and a straight handle. And then you'll need a way to sprinkle the salt-sand mixture over the pavement where it ices up the worst. We use a spade for that, but you may find another way.

Second, we all wonder about the efficacy of the mid-storm shovel. You know, when you're expecting twelve inches, and it's going to snow all day, and you look out the window and see six inches out there, should you go out and shovel so that you'll have half as much work at the end of the storm? I'm coming to believe that that's a waste of time. Go get the plow's pile at the end of the driveway, and clear a path for the mailman, but save your shoveling efforts for when the storm is over. Otherwise the wind will just blow everything around and when you go back out you won't be able to tell that you spent any time shoveling at all.

Third, you probably know this, but of course it is important to treat January snow differently than February and March snow. For the January storms, you must shovel a wide, thorough, deep path. You must patiently carry the snow all the way to the backyard, because you know that the snow is going to be where you put it for months, and it will thaw and freeze and thaw and freeze until it is as hard as concrete. If you do not do a good job now, you can never repair your error and your driveway and paths will just get narrower and narrower all winter. In February you can start to cut corners, and by March you may be so bitter and weary that you will do only what is minimally necessary to get to your car. But in January, you must take pride in a wide and clean path.

December 11, 2009

This morning I got up while it was dark, checked my phone -- no cancellation message, drat -- and suited up. I put on SmartWool socks, medium thickness, a medium weight pair of capilene long underwear, warm cross-country skiing training pants, and a gore-tex windpant. On my upper body I wore a cotton undershirt, a capilene layer, a fleece hoody, and a windbreaker. Gloves, scarf, hat.

Met my walking pal for a walk. It was still dark when we started. The path was mostly clear, with some crunchy ice patches. It was 21 degrees, but the wind was fierce -- about 20 miles an hour -- and so it felt cold. I was warm enough, mostly, because I did a good job getting dressed.

We spent the first 10 minutes of our walk chatting happily about what we were wearing. Getting dressed for the cold, what you choose and whether it works or not, is almost always an interesting conversation here. I should have worn a balaclava, because my face was pinchy-cold, and my ears really started to sing with discomfort. My friend chose down, and we discussed that for a while. Down is rarely a good choice if you're active at all -- it is too warm for real activity, you end up hot. Indeed, my friend took off her gloves sooner than I did.

Anyway, I thought about you, over there in Sacramento, and I really wondered: what's the California equivalent of conversations about outerwear? In Maine you can almost always talk about it: waterproofness, warmth, weight, smelliness, cost. Getting dressed right is hard, and you can never have enough information about how to do it better. Do you guys talk about wicking and breathability? Do you talk about irrigation and water conservation? What does everyone talk about if not how to stay warm?

December 07, 2009

I don't know why it should take me by surprise, but it does. I don't know how I can forget things like how to dress for the cold or how to walk on ice, but seven months of mildness lulled me into a different state. Last night in the car I was watching the snow do that thing it does on the road. You know how there's sort of a little ghostly dance of snow that glides along in the air currents behind cars, sort of braiding and settling and rising? It's like a tiny snakey dance of snow and it happens in the winter time, whenever there's a little bit of powdery snow blowing off the roofs of cars. It can't settle on the road because the cars kick it up and so it sort of dances over the surface of the road, and I had completely forgotten. Oh yeah, I thought. That's the way snow behaves.

I'm thinking a lot about fun these days. I realized not so long ago that I don't have as much fun as I'd like to. I mean that word very specifically -- I have a lot of pleasure and contentment, a lot of satisfaction, a lot of involvement, a lot of social stimulation and personal growth. But there's a piece missing, and it's "fun". When I started asking myself how to get more fun in my life I naturally thought about what I used to do that is fun, and I realized that some of the same things that were once fun wouldn't be fun to me anymore. I've been thinking about things that are obviously fun for other people and which ones would and wouldn't be fun for me. Anyway, when I get a few minutes I'll sit down and tell you what I've learned from these thoughts, and what I still haven't figured out.

April 19, 2009

Listen, I have already acknowledged that you win as far as agriculture and plant production goes. So it's sort of silly for you to be rubbing my nose in it with all your flower pictures. My small brown scruffy yard cannot compare. Must I remind you that I live in America's most livable city, that we are always featured in hip architecture and lifestyle magazines for our arty sensibility and our good restaurants? If we were forever smelling our flowers and sitting in the sun, how could we get anything done? We PREFER our late spring. I am GLAD we have another month before frost danger is over.

We bought this house in the winter, and we never saw the yard without snow. We live right downtown, on a hill, and the backyard is a secret surprise. (Since we moved here I have become very snoopy, peeking whenever I can to catch a glimpse of other city backyards -- there are some unexpected hidden treasures here in the West End.) It's small but private and we are interested to see what the shoots peeking up will unfurl themselves to become. Here are some pictures of the yard as it is. Want to redesign it for us?

We planted herbs and pansies into containers yesterday, and spent some time sitting in our green chairs speculating about what we might do in the yard. I think it makes some sense to live in it for a summer before we start making big changes. We need to see how the sun moves and where we like to sit in the evenings and what's already planted. Also, of course, waiting and watching is much more pleasant than hauling around lots of rocks and mulch. I like the idea of gardening much more than I actually like gardening. Containers and window boxes are just about right for me. My morning glory and nasturtium seeds are sitting in packets, waiting until it is warm enough to plant them outside. That's my summer gardening plan. When you move here, I would be happy to sit in one of the green chairs reading a book and talking now and then to you while you work in the yard. I will make a pitcher of iced tea and pour you a glass and invite you to sit down and rest now and then.

November 10, 2008

It's frostbite sailing season. Yesterday was windy, with big shifty puffs coming off the land. Low grey clouds were scattered enough to let streaks of sunshine in, slanty and yellow and lighting up the boats and some trees on the distant shores. Days like yesterday pull me through the damp chilly gloom of November.

October 18, 2008

This tree is on the path I walk when I go to swim at lunch. These photos were taken over the course of a week. Yesterday there were no leaves left, and I wanted, bleakly, to take a picture but had forgotten my camera. It's just as well. The trees are becoming skeletons now. Even the pine trees are dropping needles everywhere. It's a myth that they are implacable. They shed, too, just not quite as visibly as their deciduous cousins.

This is a hard time of year for me. Oh, yes, the leaves are great and the sky is such a piercing blue and the sun is all slanty low and yellow. It smells great, all these smoky leafy smells, with the tang of cold weather pinching the inside of your nostrils, too. And on rainy dark nights there's something extra spooky about the windows rattling, and leaves blowing all around everywhere. It's like your own horror picture, all the prickly props there for your imagination.

But oh, it's dark so early. And everyone who knows me will be rolling their eyes, because this becomes my mantra. Can you BELIEVE how DARK it is? How EARLY? I mean, it is SO DARK. ALREADY. And then I get all overdramatic. We still have more than a month. The days are getting even shorter. Pretty soon it's going to be dark all the time. Dark when we wake up. Dark when we leave the office. Dark for the whole drive home. Dark dark dark dark dark. I don't mind the cold so much as the dark, and I don't think I mind the dark so much as the GETTING DARK, the days slipping into night at this crazy restless pace. One day the tree is full of leaves and the next day its a grey skeleton. One day I can walk the dogs around the block after work, admiring the glowing sunset and how it illuminates the windows on the island houses across the bay. And the next day I get home from work and it's already dark out, and I want to hibernate and eat dinner at 6 and get into bed at 7:15.

I'll get through this, I suppose, when December comes and it's all lovely and see-your-breath frosty and there's snow on the ground and I can get all rhapsodic about cross country skiing and the beautiful frost patterns on the windowpanes. But late October and November are very tough. Go ahead and start with the gloating. This is your time to shine.

September 16, 2008

Oh god. I was clearing out the weeds from the walkway at the community garden as it was getting dark, taking big rough handfuls of things and ripping them out. Did this Sunday night, too, and had my second run-in with a huge green praying mantis in a month. Both times I found out about the praying mantis by getting a big ol' handful of him. Both times he scratched me. Not deep or anything, but enough to shriek and fling it away and then come back to look at the eight foot long praying mantis with slavering jaws and eyes that shoot laser beams. Tonight it wasn't a praying mantis. Tonight I caught a glimpse of the long waving black legs in time to snatch my hand back from three huge black widows. Three of them. Big. Moving and stuff. I'm rocking back and forth as I type this.

Right now, and probably until the feeling that anything that touches me is a spider goes away, everything is to blame. I don't love big stripey spiders in pretty webs. I hate them and all spiders, and I hate no-pesticide gardening with my own hands. I love huge conventional agriculture, stripped down to dirt and clean lines of crops as far as the eye can see. I'll buy my vegetables from Safeway, thank you very much. I also hate community gardens, with their stupid pathways where things grow. I love concrete pathways. I hate nature. Wolves are not wise and beautiful totems for lesbians. They're varmints to be shot from planes. Coyotes are not tawny agents of the trickster. Varmints. They're all varmints! I hate fall, stupid dusk coming earlier and making nocturnal spiders brave. Stupid earth tilting away from the sun. I hate that too.

Right now the only two things I don't hate are my bicycle, which carried me away from the garden too fast for the black widows to give chase, and the burrito I'm about to go eat. A burrito will make this all better, right? Burritos contain, like, ninety percent of the restorative magic in the world. I don't understand how you live in a place where a burrito isn't the default, the standard, the way, the cure. Perhaps after a burrito I'll be able to see beauty in nature again.

August 04, 2008

I have a few things to say, things readers have written in that have contributed and extended my thoughts about social class, and a response to some of the stuff you've written lately. But today summer burst in on us, everyone and their extended family is on the island, plus I had visitors, too. Boats are rafted on the floats on the dock because there's not room for everyone, and cars are all willy nilly squeezed into the woods and jammed into places in the parking lot. The westerly just swung around to the south and it looks like the thundershowers are going to miss us this afternoon. It's too busy to sit still and think much.

Instead I'll send you this picture of seals. Last night a little before sunset it was still and calm, and one of the dogs and I took a motorboat out to Seal Rock, a ledge that's out of the water at low tide, where loads of seals like to lounge around and sun themselves. When we arrived they all bellyflopped into the water, but I turned off the motor and just let the boat drift there. I counted thirty sleek wet heads, all swimming towards me, curiously, and then ducking underwater, on all sides of my boat. Finally they got sick of being vigilant, and clambered back up on the rocks. When they're out of the water, they're lots lighter colored than when they're swimming around. They sometimes growl like dogs when they're fussing with one another, like if one of them wants to bully another one off a special spot on the rock. And when they're swimming close to you they exhale through their nose in the quiet afternoon stillness, and it's great to be near enough, and silent enough, to hear them huffing.

July 19, 2008

Hi friend. Sorry I've been scarce. I am taking your advice, and some of the sensible advice of our readers. Bought fingernail clippers and have been using them, which is a good start. Considering a manicure, although that still seems like crazy talk. Joined Netflix and ordered up all the Nova specials about the universe I could find, and while I was at it, some about cuttlefish, about hurricanes, about bees, about ants, and about lightning. And one about Isaac Newton. Nova is going to be my new system for learning about the things I buy books about and do not read. And maybe office hours when I get back to civilization.

Here's what I've been thinking about. Crushes, and weather. About crushes: I just noticed that a 10 year old boy in one of my sailing classes seems to have a crush on me. I can make him stammer. It's very flattering, and now that I've noticed it I think I like him just a little bit better, and I am teaching him just a little bit extra. I look for opportunities to show him something cool, and I pay attention to see if he shows off for me. On the other hand, I have a crush on one of the moms. I think she's great, and I get nervous talking to her, and then I replay the conversation in my head afterwards, trying to figure out whether I sounded like a fool or what she meant and whether she likes me or not. Unfortunately mostly I sound like a fool, and so then I'm even more nervous the next time I see her, because I know I have ground to make up if she's going to realize that we're really soul sisters, and call me up and tell me secrets and go for long walks with me and sit on the porch drinking iced coffees. Crushes don't go away when you get married, or at least they haven't for me. I don't flirt very often any more, and now my crushes are pretty far flung and strange, because they're totally unmoored from my romantic life. I have a crush on an older couple, who I think are impossibly gracious. I always feel really lucky when they talk to me, and I wonder about them, and I am harboring a secret hope that they will invite me to their house for cocktails and we will talk about books. They tease me, because that's how it is when you are impossibly gracious, always remembering details and touching my elbow when they talk to me. But I don't think they have a crush on me back.

(I know it sounds like I am writing about general friendly admiration, but there are lots of people here who I feel like that about. Crushes are different. You notice the person in a crowd and keep track of who they are talking to and where they are standing, even when they're on the other side of the room. You remember what you talked about, and you feel like you muffed it all up, or if you didn't, you feel a delight with your own cleverness that lasts you all day.)

And weather. I am moderately good at figuring out a place's weather, but I've been thinking about how to get better. A club member who is a pilot gave me the password to his secret aviation weather subscription service, and it was all these maps and plots and radar reads and isobars and the like, and it was pretty cool yesterday when I was trying to figure out whether the lines of thunderstorms building to our west were going to hit the racecourse or pass to our south. You would have liked the website, because you like technical stuff. Every day that I need to predict the wind direction and strength I check three or four internet sites. They're all wrong, but they give me a general picture of what's going on in the region, which helps me guess better. I listen to the NOAA weather radio broadcast, which has been wrong about 50% of the summer so far. (I should probably just stop listening to it, although the thunderstorm warnings are important.) And I sit on a picnic table and look at the clouds, and the color of the sky, and the texture of the surface of the water, and that's where most of my information comes. I was thinking today about how to describe or name what I know about weather, and I realized how inarticulate my understanding really is. Almost everything else I'm competent at is something I can name, unpack, describe, teach. I can't even tell you about the sky this afternoon, how it thickened and got yellow-grey, not hazy but just denser, before the thunderclouds had even started to tower. There aren't words for this stuff, but I'm studying it just the same.

June 25, 2008

This is where I just got done swimming. I counted the steps from my front door, because I knew you would ask. 78 steps. And the water wasn't as cold as you would think. I expected to feel like I had been immersed in an ice bath. But instead I just felt like I'd been immersed in very cold water. And I'm used to that. I stayed in about twenty minutes or so, doing circles around the docks, doggy paddling, floating on my back. And then when I climbed out I lay on my back on the warm wood and let the sun dry me. In the distance I could hear waves, a flag flapping, and a lawnmower somewhere, a long way off.

I'm not trying to trick you with a bait-and-switch. You've been here, and you've gone with me to the drab municipal pool, with its fluorescent lights and top 40 music playing on the radio and the congested roads leading there and back. That's where I swim most of the time, and your outdoor pool sure looks nicer. But this is where I swam today, and where I will swim tomorrow, and the day after that, and for the whole summer. So I think that makes us even on the swimming facilities. Not that anyone is keeping score.

Rhubarb Pie

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